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YUI PHP Loader

chadauld@gmail.com (Chad Auld) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:46:50 GMT

Last week I gave on talk at YUIConf, the Yahoo! User Interface (YUI Library) conference, about the recently released YUI PHP Loader. This is a YUI component that I co-authored with Adam Moore from the YUI Team. It is a server-side utility that allows you to load specific YUI components and their dependencies into your page via PHP. YUI PHP Loader can operate as a holistic solution by loading all of your necessary YUI components, or it can be used to add one or more components to a page on which some YUI content already exists.

The video from my talk is embedded below. The code is open source and you can find it on github here - http://github.com/yui/phploader/.

Mockingbird - Related Tweet Widget

chadauld@gmail.com (Chad Auld) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 06:06:53 GMT

I put together a new JavaScript Twitter widget today called Mockingbird. Mockingbird displays related tweets based on the content of the page it lives on. How does it work?

Mockingbird uses YQL to get the contents of the web page that it lives on
The page content is them passed to the Yahoo! Term Extraction Web Service
The top 3 page keyword terms are then used to to construct a search against Twitter
The JavaScript makes heavy use of the Yahoo! User Interface library, YUI

The code is open source (MIT) and available on Github. Here is a live demo. Feedback is welcome.

Sideline: Adobe AIR + YUI + Twitter Search

chadauld@gmail.com (Chad Auld) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:24:51 GMT

I've been working on a new project, Sideline, for Yahoo! over the last several months. What started off as a small side project quickly took on a life of its own. Sideline is an Adobe AIR desktop application that allows advanced searching and monitoring of the Twitter public timeline. It makes use of the Yahoo! User Interface library (YUI) and demonstrates how YUI can be an effective JavaScript framework even outside the standard browsing environment. Here is an article I did on the YUIBlog which goes into more detail on the product and on using YUI within the AIR environment in general. Rather than retell the story I recommend you have a look over there. I'll do a follow-up post about AIR and memory usage in an upcoming post.

The code is open source under the BSD license. You can find the github branch here. Enjoy and happy forking!

UPDATE: Here is a short video interview I did for the Yahoo Developer Network (YDN) about the development of Sideline.

Setup Boxee on Ubuntu 8.10

chadauld@gmail.com (Chad Auld) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 20:09:12 GMT

As I mentioned in a previous post I recently switched over to Boxee for all my digital content needs. My initial Boxee setup was done with an Apple Mac Mini. The installation/configuration process in that case was extremely simple. The first Boxee Media Center worked out so well that I wanted a second one to replace digital cable and Tivo in the bedroom as well. I have a second Mac Mini, but it is a bit older and I quickly realized it would not work with Boxee since they do not support the G4 chip. In addition to Mac OS X boxee also supports Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10. So I decided to tear apart some old boxes I had laying around from past MythTV experiments and build a myself a new Boxee Media Center with Ubuntu 8.10. The Boxee setup process for Ubuntu 8.10 was not as simple and so I wanted to document it here for the benefit of others.

Digital Content Your Way (Boxee)

chadauld@gmail.com (Chad Auld) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 17:54:01 GMT

A few years back my friend and I built our own Tivo like boxes with Ubuntu and MythTV. The process was less than simple and involved a lot of tweaking and experimentation, but the end result was actually quite nice. Today this process has been simplified a great deal and users can grab one of many pre-built MythTV Linux distributions such as Mythbuntu. I ran my MythTV box for a few months before I ran into a hardware issue. I swapped out a few parts with no luck and without much time to troubleshoot it the box sat idle for over a year.

Since that time I've experimented with a number of services to get my digital content; DirectTV, Tivo, the Galleon Tivo Media Server, Amazon Video On Demand, BitTorrent, Usenet, iTunes, Hulu, Joost, Schmooze.TV, Netflix, etc. Each of these methods has its own set of advantages and disadvantages. Some are fairly nerdy and unfriendly to the average user. Others have a cost component that may or may not be within ones budget. One component that has always been required in my setup was digital cable (i.e.) Comcast and/or DirectTV. These services have worked without issue, but are very costly and come overloaded with commercial advertisements. We have used Tivo for over 6 years now to morph digital cable into tolerable on demand and commercial free content. I do not mind advertising in the free content found on sites like Hulu, ABC, CBS, etc, but when I spend as much money as I do with my digital cable service I don't appreciate the additional marketing. In recent years digital cable companies have started to create their own on demand services and Tivo like interfaces. I've not been impressed with a single one thus far though.

With the amount of digital content available on the Internet these days I decided it was time to have a go at eliminating digital cable from my list of services. The current economic crisis has made this even more appealing since who wouldn't be up for dropping a costly monthly bill or two. There are various methods of retrieving TV shows, movies, and music on the Internet in an illegal manner, but I am focused legal methods and as I stated earlier I am ok with advertisements in otherwise free content. So I started by laying out what my ultimate setup would feel like. I want on demand access to TV shows (past and present), a collection of Movies (past and present), my own library of digital content (music, dvds, pictures, etc), and a streaming music service. I want all that in an single interface that I can interact with via my remote control over my broadband Internet connection. Lastly, I'd prefer it be something based around open source technology.

jChat - YUI, Jaxer, & ActiveRecord

chadauld@gmail.com (Chad Auld) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 09:29:04 GMT

For those familiar with MiaCMS you'll already know I'm a huge fan of the Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI). I recently finished up the JavaScript work for version 4.8 of MiaCMS. With some free-time on my hands I figured what better way to fill it than with a new project? So I set out to learn some new technology and see how I might mash it up with some existing skills like YUI. The new technologies I decided to experiment with were Aptana's Jaxer and their new ActiveRecord.js framework.

Jaxer ships with a number of basic samples, but I've seen quite a few people online in search of more complex examples and specifically ones that make use of the new ActiveRecord.js library. The extended example I developed is called jChat. jChat is fully functional chatroom application that demonstrates integration of the following web related technologies; HTML, CSS, JavaScript, MySQL, YUI, Jaxer, and Activerecord.js.

jChat's DOM access/manipulation, event handling, and animation code makes heavy use of YUI. The YUI Library is a set of utilities and controls, written in JavaScript, for building richly interactive web applications using techniques such as DOM scripting, DHTML and AJAX.

Jaxer is an Ajax Server that will allow us to built entire applications using JavaScript and Ajax. The theory being that JavaScript experts can build applications without needing additional server side languages (ex) PHP. There is nothing wrong with PHP, in fact is just so happens to be one of my favorite languages, but the important point to be made here is that Jaxer eliminates the requirement for additional server side languages. That being said you don't have to do away with server side languages and in some cases it might make a lot of sense to utilize Jaxer with a server side language like PHP. Another added bonus developers get with Jaxer is code reuse. Typically we see develops implementing similar functionality in multiple languages to handle things like data validation for example. With Jaxer it is possible to write the JavaScript validation code once and utilize it both client and server side. This could therefore lead to less debugging, simpler testing, and faster time to market.

ActiveRecord.js is a cross browser, cross platform, JavaScript ORM. ActiveRecord.js makes it easy to begin working with databases in JavaScript on the client or server, with Google Gears and Chrome, Aptana Jaxer, Adobe AIR or any platform supporting the W3C HTML5 SQL Specification (currently Webkit and iPhone). Overall I found ActiveRecord.js simple to integrate and a pleasure to use. I found a few bugs initially (mostly just some sytanx issues preventing proper minification). Thanks to the power of github I was able to fork it, make some modifications, and submit a pull request which they ultimately accepted and merged with the master branch. I've been working on another Adobe AIR related project which I started before the first beta release of ActiveRecord.js. It makes use of AIR's native support for SQLite, but I'll more than likely rewrite the database code to make use of this new library which should have the added benefit of easing application updates/database migrations down the road.

I've put all the source code up on github so that others can benefit from my learnings. Chatrooms have been done a million times so jChat is less about the overall application functionality and more about the pairing of technology. Feel free to download, learn from, and/or fork jChat on github - http://github.com/cauld/jchat/tree/master. Comments, suggestions, and contributions welcome. A demo is available here - http://jchat.opensourcepenguin.net as well.

MiaCMS 4.8 Beta Released

chadauld@gmail.com (Chad Auld) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 21:57:50 GMT

I'm happy to announce the first beta release of MiaCMS version 4.8.Â This release has been months in the making and brings with it OpenID 1 & 2 support, content versioning, a brand new JavaScript architecture, a YUI Upgrade, an enhancement to the Related Articles module, a new version of the MOStlyCE editor, and plenty of bug fixes.Â

We hope the community will spend the next few weeks helping us thoroughly test the beta.Â If all goes well the stable release will follow shortly thereafter.Â Detailed release notes and some screenshots can be found here.Â Official downloads can be found here.Â There will be an upgrade path from 4.6.5 to 4.8, but for the beta there is just the full build as this version is not recommended for production usage yet.

This release goes a long way toward stabilizing/modernizing the codebase and preparing us for the next phase of this award winning CMS platform.Â With the official 4.8 release behind us the team can begin to focus on the next major release of the CMS.Â The team has been planning and setting goals for the next major release over the last several months.Â Some of these discussions even go back as far as 3 or 4 years.Â We should have some exciting information to share with the community by the time version 4.8 sees an official release.Â More to come on that topic soon...

Packt Publishing 2008 Open Source CMS Awards

chadauld@gmail.com (Chad Auld) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 10:14:55 GMT

Packt Publishing has anounced the winners in the 2008 Most Promising Open Source CMS category of their annual competition.Â Silverstripe and CMS Made Simple took home first and second place. I am very happy report that MiaCMS came in 3rd place overall tied with another terrific Content Management System named ImpressCMS.

It is absolutely delightful to experience this kind of recognition for the project.

Most Promising Open Source CMS

chadauld@gmail.com (Chad Auld) — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 08:39:22 GMT

I have some very exciting news to announce. MiaCMS has been selected as a finalist in the PacktPub 2008 Open Source CMS competition. We have made it into the "Most Promising Open Source CMS" category. As you know the MiaCMS project is only about 5 months old, but we have worked hard and are quite proud of the results thus far. It is an honor to be among other great finalists and we thank you everyone who nominated us.

The official list can be see here:
http://www.packtpub.com/2008-open-source-cms-award-finalists

The official voting starts Monday September 1. Your nominations helped get us to this point so please don't forget to stop back and cast your official vote.

iMia - iPhone Interface

chadauld@gmail.com (Chad Auld) — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 19:56:36 GMT

iMia is a web application focused on bringing a standard iPhone web interface to the MiaCMS, Mambo, and Joomla! content management systems. Yes, the iPhone does have a full web browser that is capable of displaying any site, so it is possible to use these content management systems without iMia. However, the experience is often less than appealing since users must constantly zoom in, zoom out, pinch to expand and contract, etc. As with most web sites and/or applications, these content management systems were coded with the desktop browser in mind. This is were iMia comes in...

iMia brings a simple web interface to the MiaCMS, Mambo, and Joomla! content management systems for iPhone users. The application is designed in accordance with the recommended iPhone interface design guidelines laid out by Apple. iMia makes use of the iui project's fabulous efforts in this area.

Learn more on the product page here - http://wiki.brilaps.com/wikka.php?wakka=iMia.